Chapter 313: The Cold and Heat of the Market

For Nishijima Sota's invitation, Kuda Kenichi was a bit moved.

But being moved didn't mean he had to agree immediately.

After all, he spent a lot of energy to climb to the position of section chief in a giant company like Tokyo Publishing Hanbai.

If he left, everything he did before would undoubtedly be in vain, and he would have to start all over again.

Therefore, he still had to see what Nishijima Sota specifically said.

Nishijima Sota was not surprised; if he could easily pull a capable assistant just by drawing a big cake, he wouldn't have to work so hard to invite him in person.

He nodded and said: "We want to build our own distribution system, so we need contact information and data of bookstores in various regions of Japan."

In the Japanese archipelago, there are about 30,000 bookstores.

Although it can build a warehousing system by establishing bookstores in the future, if these bookstore operators don't know that they can sell directly because of information asymmetry, then it will still be a failure.

That's why he took the initiative to pry the wall of Tokyo Publishing Hanbai, trying to obtain contact information from the hands of their employees.

Besides that, he also wanted to use Kuda Kenichi's identity to dispel the concerns in the hearts of some bookstore managers.

"Will this involve trade secrets?"

Kuda Kenichi hesitated, he didn't want to jump over and be sued by Donghan.

Nishijima Sota laughed.

"Section Chief Kuda, so-called trade secrets, although they include customer lists, the requirement is that they are not known to the public. But do you think the bookstore list you know is unknown to the public?"

He paused and said again: "We hope more that you can help Tsutaya Bookstore further communicate with bookstore managers in various places."

Kuda Kenichi heard this content and immediately understood his greatest use.

In Japanese society, many bookstores like to cooperate with only one long-term distributor or a few publishers.

So even if Tsutaya Bookstore rashly stands out to cooperate with these bookstores, it may eat a lot of "closed doors."

But if he can join Tsutaya Bookstore, he can help Tsutaya Bookstore communicate with these bookstores smoothly, thereby reducing the difficulty of their communication.

Nishijima Sota continued: "Regarding income, Tsutaya Bookstore will not let you suffer. In addition to ensuring an annual salary of 9 million yen, there will be bonuses formulated based on performance at the end of the year."

The so-called bonus was decided by him and Akiwara Yuto after discussion.

After all, if you want the horse to run fast, you have to feed the horse first.

And compared with the role brought by Kuda Kenichi, this money is just a number.

In fact, Nishijima Sota didn't just target Kuda Kenichi alone. In order to open up the national market as soon as possible, he was also prepared to poach people from another publishing distribution company.

Kuda Kenichi pursed his lips after hearing the conditions.

Staying in a giant like Tokyo Hanbai, although the work salary is stable, there are too many old employees above him, and he may have to wait until he is over 50 to reach the position of deputy director or minister.

And the salary in his hand now is only a mere 6 million yen a year.

Compared with the conditions Tsutaya Bookstore offered him, it was undoubtedly more than one grade worse.

And looking at the other party's expression, Nishijima Sota raised his eyebrows, and the corners of his mouth couldn't help but curl up.

He knew that he had almost persuaded the other party!

While Nishijima Sota was constantly poaching people to build a channel network, the follow-up reaction brought by the limited sales of the book *Snow Country* affected many people.

From Tokyo to Hokkaido, from Kyoto to Osaka, readers everywhere couldn't buy this book.

Some people even ran to 10 bookstores in a row and only heard the news that it was out of stock.

According to the past, if only a few readers reported that it was out of stock, the bookstore would not be too deliberate to pursue the problem of ordering.

But the book *Snow Country* frequently appeared on newspaper news because of a large amount of exposure, and received unanimous praise from many book reviewers, so many readers were interested and planned to buy it to see.

In many bookstores, there might be more than 30 people asking in one day.

This is not a small number. After all, with the personality of the Japanese people not wanting to add trouble to others, many readers will just leave if they find it out of stock after a turn.

Along with it, they will think that the bookstore's books are not complete enough, and they may not come again next time.

So many bookstores had to be forced to call the two distributors, Tokyo Publishing Hanbai and Nihon Publishing Hanbai, and some even blew up the phone.

But the final feedback was all "sorry, there is no stock yet!"

During this period, bookstores with books in the store undoubtedly became "fragrant buns."

Taking Tokyo as an example, more than 100 physical bookstores that signed direct sales directly with Tsutaya Bookstore sold out the inventory of *Snow Country* in 4 days and gained a large number of new customers.

And other bookstores without direct sales cooperation business could only watch the customers being taken away.

However, under the reminder of some "interested people," other bookstores in Tokyo also found Tsutaya Bookstore one by one, hoping to establish direct sales business.

By the end of December, 800 bookstores in Tokyo had already requested to order *Snow Country* by contacting Tsutaya Bookstore directly, and the order quantity of each bookstore ranged from 50 to 400 copies.

Just this batch of orders, *Snow Country* sold 80,000 copies.

However, what is a bit disappointing is that bookstores in various places outside Tokyo only have scattered orders.

After all, in the eyes of these bookstore owners in other places, if there is no distributor as a financial intermediary, they have to run to Tokyo and pay an order payment to Tsutaya Bookstore to get this batch of books.

If you only order less than 100 copies, the round-trip travel expenses may be equivalent to the net profit.

Besides that, the logistics cost of shipping from Tokyo to other places is very expensive, so if you order directly, the bookstore may have to bear the shipping cost itself.

However, although the cost is expensive, the bookstore cannot transfer the cost to the reader by raising the price.

After all, the bookstore implements a commission pricing system, that is, all bookstores nationwide must sell according to the price set by the publisher.

Under these concerns, most bookstore operators outside Tokyo think that buying *Snow Country* from Tsutaya Bookstore is a losing business, so they have no interest in finding Tsutaya Bookstore.

By the last day of January, Tsutaya Bookstore's commercial map in Japan formed two distinct blocks.

One side is the bustling local market in Tokyo, which can completely cast aside the two distributors, Tokyo Publishing Hanbai and Nihon Publishing Hanbai, to form its own sales network, completing the preliminary requirements.

The other side is the dull foreign market, with only a few cities near Tokyo having some consultation calls or orders.

But by early January, Tsutaya Bookstore, which had already poached some manpower, began further layout for the foreign market... ===== CHAPTER 314 =====